


a sap in disguise

by nonbinarynino



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Goodbye Kisses, Goodbyes, Pre-Season/Series 08, that's not a tag but i'm making it one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 07:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17524217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarynino/pseuds/nonbinarynino
Summary: James Griffin, the guy who had apparently been a jerk to Keith for the longest time, had especially not been on her list of people to connect with, but … here she is, realizing that she’s going to have to leave him, too.[Prompt: A "we can never be together" kiss.]





	a sap in disguise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> This is imported from my tumblr! You can find the fic [here!](https://nonbinarynino.tumblr.com/post/178619500981/36-for-pidjamas-for-the-kiss-prompt-if-youre) its sliiightly edited but not enough to be noticeable, just some grammar changes and stuff
> 
> I wrote this 4 months ago for green, whose tumblr is [here!](https://green-and-blue-hues.tumblr.com) go give them some love they deserve it!
> 
> Keep in mind this was written pre s8

Pidge’s breath catches in her throat and strangles her, dark and twisted. She feels rooted to where she’s standing, unable to move. The other paladins display similar reactions beside her, with Hunk's arms gripping his arms too tight, and Lance squeezing his eyes shut, but she can barely focus on them. All she can even think about is the fact that it feels as though the floor has been pushed out from underneath her, and she's falling, falling -

“What do you mean,  _three weeks_?” she demands, resentment twisting her words into something more cruel than she means for them to be. She takes a deep breath, noting how shaky it sounds, and tries again. “I just got my family back.”

“I know how hard this might be to hear,” Allura says, and it’s as if she’s attempting to be soothing. “We had no idea that the end of the war would be so … short-lived. But we have another ship, now, one that can house all of the lions, and if there is truly an uprising as the Arusians describe… Voltron needs to be there.”

Lance and Hunk both look as if they are about to cry, and the second after Pidge forms that thought, they both start to. She feels tears in the back of her eyes, too, but she doesn’t let them fall. She knew that she’d be going back to space eventually, she  _knew_ , but she hadn’t expected that for many more months. Maybe even years.

“Now, if … you _truly_ do not wish to go,” Allura says, as if she can simply not bear the thought of the team splitting up, “we can attempt to find other pilots who will bond with your lions. The MFE pilots all show great promise.”

The MFE pilots. James.

Pidge hadn’t meant to form bonds on Earth. She had expected to see her family, to hug Matt so much that he got sick of her, but not to meet any new people. James Griffin, the guy who had apparently been a jerk to Keith for the longest time, had especially not been on her list of people to connect with, but … here she is, realizing that she’s going to have to leave him, too.

“I’m in,” Keith says, but that’s not really a surprise at all. The only person really binding him to Earth is Shiro, since he’ll probably stay with the Atlas.

“Me, too,” Lance is right after. “I … yeah. I’m in, too.”

Pidge can only nod jerkily as Hunk offers his confirmation as well. It’s not really an option, staying on Earth. What would she even  _do_? Go back to school? Train for the war that she’s already won? She’ll just have to hug her family real close, play with Bae Bae again and again…

Pidge doesn’t listen much to the rest of the conversation. She listens to the waving tones of Allura’s voice, from firm to regretful, and she listens to the sounds of Lance holding back a sob, but the words all blur together. For a while, nobody speaks, and she’s not entirely sure if the conversation is over or not, but she turns and heads towards the door anyway. She hears her name, spoken gently and from Hunk’s mouth, but she doesn’t look back.

Her hands scramble for her phone, the one that she’d gotten after being on Earth for more than a week.  _We want to be able to contact you all the time, dear,_ her mom had said with soft eyes, and that’s all that she really uses it for. Well, most of the time.

She could go to them, now, could go be with them and simply exist in their presence for what could very well be one of the last times. That sounds like the reasonable thing to do, but she’s not sure that she wants to. She’s not sure that she wants to break that news yet to the people who mean so much to her that she  _burns_  with it.

She finds James’s contact number and hits the  _call_ button, knowing that her fingers must be shaking too much for her to type properly. The phone rings once, twice, and then there’s a click. “Hello?” his voice comes in.

“Hey, James,” she responds, and,  _oh,_  the words shake when they come out, portraying all of the emotions that she simply doesn’t want to feel. “I - can I -”

“I’m in my dorm,” he says, and he gets this  _protective_  streak when things happen about her, like when she runs into those mean kids from middle school or has a nightmare about Galran hands on her throat, and she can tell that it’s coming out now. The two of them … they’re treading down a path that Pidge wants so desperately to follow down, and now she knows that it’s going to be torn from her like a bandage from skin. “Do you need anything? Are you hurt?”

“I’m not injured,” she responds, already turning down his hallway and desperately hoping that he won’t comment on how  _hurt_ and _injured_ aren’t quite the same, not when it really comes down to it. “I’ll - I’ll be there in a minute, if that’s okay. I might, er, cry? And there’s also a chance that I’m completely overreacting. Which, like, if you don’t want to deal with, that’s completely fine-”

“ _Pidge_ ,” James says, with a tone that suggests that he would probably have rolled his eyes if this weren’t quite so serious, “it’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“Okay,” she whispers, barely audible to even her own ears, and then she’s at his door. She hangs up the phone without comment, stuffing it back into her pocket, and knocking against the wood. He opens the door so quickly that she suspects that he’d been waiting by it, and Pidge bounces off of her feet so that she can wrap her arms around his shoulders. He catches her, firm hands warm against her back, and lets her bury her nose into his neck.

“Oh, Pidge,” he says, gentler than she’s truly ever heard him, “what happened?”

When he lets her onto her feet again, she clutches her hand into the fabric of his uniform and spills her guts. “I have to go back to space,” she says. “I have to go back in three weeks and I don’t  _want_  to, I want to stay here and learn to be a normal human being again, I want to build a new life with my family and - and figure out what this is, with you, but I  _can’t_  because I need to go save the universe.”

She glances back up at him, sees the way that his facial expression shifts from something comforting to something pained. “Oh,” he says. “I - oh.”

They haven’t even known each other for that long. It sounds bizarre, knowing that it’s only been a little less than three months, but they’ve gotten close. There’s a promise humming underneath their skin every time that they speak, a concept of what their future could be like, and now it’s … now it’s gone.

Pidge slumps into him, her forehead touching against his collarbone. “I don’t want this all to go away,” she whispers, and she’s not sure if he can hear her until something in him tenses and softens all at once.

“It’ll be okay,” he tells her, but it sounds as though he can’t really believe it himself. After all, the last time she’d gone to space, she’d come back over four years later. She can’t possibly ask him to wait for her, not when what they’re going off of is so short in time. “Do you know for how long?”

“No,” she says. “It could be a year, or it could be ten, or I could die up there. I don’t know.”

“Then … this could be one of the last times we ever talk, huh?” James responds, and she feels his fingers on the bottom of her chin, lifting her face up so that they’re looking at each other.

“Yeah, I guess so,” she says. “I wish I could say it wasn’t.”

“Me, too,” he agrees. “Can I kiss you?”

Pidge blinks a few times, wondering where that had come from. It’s not like she’d been unaware of the romantic vibe between them, having spent many nights blushing over it, but … she’d kind of expected it to end painfully and abruptly with her announcement. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah. Please.”

He leans down and presses his lips to hers, and she wonders if he can taste the salt from her tears. He kisses her slowly and easily, as if this is all that he wants to do for the rest of time, and her arms reach up to loop around his neck at how much she wants that, too. When they break apart, she presses her cheek against his, desperate for the skin-to-skin contact in hopes that it will comfort her. “I wish that I could stay.”

“I know that you can’t,” he replies. “I’d do the same thing, if I were you. I get it.”

“I - I’m sorry,” Pidge says. “I know that when I go, this is going to end, and I’m sorry for that.”

“Me, too,” he says again, and they make no promises that they can’t keep. They don’t promise to drag this out painfully for  _years_. She expects no different. “But we have three more weeks, and I want to spend them with you.”

She swallows. “I’d really like that,” she tells him, and then he kisses her again.

 

* * *

 

Pidge doesn’t see James the morning that she leaves.

They had insisted that it would be for the best, that they shouldn’t distract each other when she needs to focus on taking off and he needs to focus on training the other cadets. They had said goodbye the night before, with quiet touches and sweet kisses, and when Pidge had left his dorm that night, she had cried for him, knowing that she would not see him for a long, long time.

She says goodbye to her parents that morning over breakfast, because even though they’ll be at the launch, she knows that she won’t get an opportunity to truly talk to them again. They cry into their toast and when they hug each other in the parking lot, they almost don’t let go.

She says goodbye to Matt in the Garrison hallway, and the two of them heave with laughs that are half-sobs at the mention of the trouble she’ll get into. He says that he’ll probably follow her up at some point, and that she better not do anything stupid without him. She says that her entire life is basically one big stupid action, and he agrees.

So when she meets the others outside of the main Garrison building half-past noon, looking up at the faux-Castle of Lions in front of them, she expects all of her hard goodbyes to be over. Hell knows that she’s cried more tears in the last twenty-four hours than she has in the past year, anyway.

Lance places his hand on her shoulder, gentle even through the armor. “It was hard to say goodbye to my family, too,” he tells her, voice warm with somewhat-accurate assumptions. “But we’re saving them, you know?”

“Yeah,” she agrees, her hands on her helmet tightening as his hand slips back to his side. “I know.”

He opens his mouth to say something else, but they hear the shouting of Garrison guards from behind them. “ _Hey, stop_!” Pidge turns to see what the commotion is, and even after a few seconds of staring, it still takes her longer than it should to realize that it’s James running towards her at full speed. She barely has enough time to drop her helmet before he’s sweeping her into his arms, spinning her in circles similarly to the way that Matt had when he had reunited with her in space.

She hears the confused sounds from her team members, none of them having quite connected the dots about where Pidge sneaks away, but they sound so distant, now. “You  _rule breaker_ ,” she tells James when he puts her back down, a smile on her face despite the sorrow thrumming within her. “What, you taking a page out of my book and going against the Garrison?”

“I couldn’t stay away,” he says, and puts his hands on both of her cheeks, thumb stroking her skin. Somebody must stop the guards from going after him, because they aren’t interrupted. “I guess I’m kind of an idiot for you, Holt.”

He kisses her, then, and she barely hears the  _woah_  from next to them as she kisses him back. It’s not a peck or any of the chaste kisses that they share when they’re in public hallways and nobody’s looking, no, it’s lips and tongue and her hands clutching his shoulders so tightly that he might bruise.

She feels tears build up all over again when they both let go. “Now I have to say goodbye all over again, huh?”

“Yeah,” James agrees, and even though he hadn’t cried last night or at all during the past three weeks, she sees how red that his eyes are now. “Don’t you dare forget about me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Griffin,” she says. “Keep Earth safe for me, yeah?” Her family in particular, of course, but she can’t force herself to say it out loud.

He opens his mouth to respond, but there’s yelling from the other side of the yard. “ _Griffin! You get back here right now_!”

James smiles at her, a little bit dorky and a little bit sad. “I guess that’s my cue,” he says, and then points a jokingly-menacing finger at her teammates. “You keep her safe, or I’m flying all the way up there, okay?” Her team members hum affirmations, and Pidge smiles at the fact that they truly will. They’ve always had her back.

He walks backwards on his way out, as if he cannot possibly comprehend the idea of turning his back on her. It’s ridiculously endearing. “I hope I drive you crazy in space,” he tells her, and she pretends not to notice when he wipes at his eyes. “Because I know that you’ll drive me crazy down here.”

“You’re a sap in disguise,” she calls after him, even though he’s almost out of earshot, now. The last word is almost hard to force out of her lips, but she does it. “Goodbye!”

She doesn’t hear him say it back, but she sees his mouth move in the formation of the word. After that, she expects him to finally turn around, but he doesn’t. He just says or mouths something else, something that she can’t hear but oh, she can guess, and it makes her heart sink and twist in ways that she’ll never really know how to describe.

She turns back to face her teammates eventually, and Hunk immediately draws her into a hug. “We didn’t know that you were leaving so much behind,” he says.

“Neither did I.”


End file.
